Astute Solutions, a provider of customer experience and social relationship management solutions, has released version 8.7 of its ePowerCenter customer relationship management (CRM) solution with enhancements that include full softphone functionality and mobile phone texting integration.

ePowerCenter 8.7 integrates with the cloud-based Astute Telephony to provide agents with full softphone functionality so they can use the Internet for phone calls. Because it is cloud-based, Astute Telephony can route calls to agents anywhere with an Internet connection for their softphone - even to their homes. Once agents are plugged in, Astute Telephony features rules-based or skill-based call routing to send incoming calls to the most appropriate agent.

The newest version of ePowerCenter also supports mobile phone text messaging. Customers will be able to reach call center agents directly by sending text messages from their mobile phones. When the agent answers the text within ePowerCenter, the ensuing transcript of the chat automatically becomes part of a case. And since the customer will be using the phone to text, that mobile number can be used to look up a customer history, including previous chat sessions.

The update supports RealDialog version 6.0 for Agent Assist. These two tools from Astute Solutions provide contact center agents with consistent, quick answers to customers’ questions. They improve agents’ access to images, video, maps and other rich media content to include in their answers.

Some ePowerCenter users have LivePerson chat to interact with their Web site visitors. With version 8.7, chats that are initiated with LivePerson chat can take place within an ePowerCenter case instead of in a separate window. As a result, agents will no longer have to copy chat sessions from LivePerson chat into ePowerCenter.

"Astute Solutions is helping businesses keep in step with changes in the ways that people communicate, both among customers and within the contact center itself," said Alex George, chief technology officer at Astute Solutions, in a statement. "With SMS Chat, we are empowering the contact center to communicate with the customer whenever and however the customer wants."